Tag: alphabet

Some people think google and their new secret daddy ‘Alphabet‘ are ok. Perhaps this article will convince you otherwise?

In the past, google would very slowly ‘creep’ you from behind. They’d take a little ‘peek’ over your shoulder at your personal information and then kind of ‘accidentally’ share that information with advertisers. No biggy. People get their ‘free’ services and feel like it’s ok to have a bit of ‘peeking’ since all this ‘great’ stuff is free.

How about if they peek down your shirt, though?

Or, wait! Would it be ok if they watched you while you were changing in your bedroom?

You have been a frog in lukewarm water and Google (and Apple, and Microsoft, and others) have turned up the heat without you noticing.

Well, you kind of noticed. You kind of noticed how some conveniently relevant ads started showing up in your inbox and on all the websites you started visiting. You kind of noticed how the mail that shows up in your snail mail box is really quite… relevant. You have had a sneaky suspicion that ‘someone is watching’ but you just couldn’t figure out who. Or why they would watch someone as unimportant as you.

It just so happens you are much more important than you gave yourself credit for – so much so that you have become a sought after commodity in a machine whose belly cannot be satisfied.

You have become Google’s whippin’ boy and you are starting to enjoy the pain.

You feel like you can’t get out.

You feel like there is no hope so you might as well go like an ox to the slaughter.

Let me stop you before the axe falls on your neck and remind you the following simple facts:

Today was an almost prophetic confirmation of my gut’s instinct when a friend of mine forwarded me this article written from a European perspective.

Read this, too.
Really get it.

It’s not easy to divorce from Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc, but you only have two options: freedom or slavery.

It took me about 5 years to fully free myself from all things proprietary. Even today there are still small traces of these guys in my life, but I can confidently say I’m 99% free.

Once you are on the road to freedom it gets easier, just to let you know. It’s like any addiction. Heroin addicts convulse, sweat, puke their guts up and hate their life for quite a while before sobriety starts to look good. Don’t think Google or Apple will let you go without a fight. Even your emotions will come into play. You will miss their haunting voices for a while. But once you have tasted freedom, you won’t go back to jail.

I encourage all of you to take action today. Get connected with your local ubuntu community as a first step because it’s full of people who have answers for *all* of these pervasive problems.